


Junkyard

by mysteryroach



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Teen Goth Jared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 07:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5530889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteryroach/pseuds/mysteryroach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donald becomes gay and goth in one fell swoop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Junkyard

**Author's Note:**

> my SV Squad gift exchange for megismywife. now for all to enjoy.

Donald knew that something was different when he was 12. He was placed in a house that had cable for once, and he became a voracious consumer of television. He wasn’t especially proud of it, something about it seemed shameful, but it also connected him with kids at school (who he never spoke to, knowing that he would never stay long enough to get to know them). And one night it connected him to something else. Donald stayed up at nights, often drinking coffee, because no one noticed and everyone knew that MTV played the good videos at night. Once, they played a live performance of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Donald had never heard of them, but he watched everything. It made no difference to him. They were doing a song called “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. It was dramatic and sounded ancient. Their guitar player took his guitar off and started to sing, and the other guy (Nick Cave, as he later found out), snaked around him the entire time as they called back and forth, singing this song about murder and sex. And finally, at the end of the song, they kissed. Donald had no idea how long the kiss actually lasted, but it felt eternal to him.

And that was it. Over the next few years, over the next few houses, Donald transformed into a gay goth nightmare.

When he was 14, he rode his bike to every thrift store in town, raiding their cassette collections for Bauhaus and Birthday Party tapes. He rarely got lucky, but he had to check. It became a ritual for him. Once, he found an Einsturzende Neubauten t-shirt for 50 cents. It was a small, and barely fit over his increasingly stretched torso, but he didn’t care. He was pale and skeletal and it worked for him. His face was sunken under a mop of black, stringy hair. To be goth was a personal choice, but it was a practical one too. There was a uniform, and black clothes hid the fact that he was dirty, black hair hid his face from ineffective social workers and kids at school who knew about his home life, and knew, somehow _knew_ the thing he was becoming.

His homosexuality and gothness were awoken at once by that Nick Cave video, but he hesitated to call himself gay. He knew it was coming, but he hadn’t even had a crush yet. He never stayed in a place long enough to develop one. Sometimes at night he dreamed about a day when someone would love him. But it was relatively genderless, all limbs and warmth, nothing else.

The first time it happened, it was in freshman art class. They were doing a photography unit, and Donald started to see everything in frames. He couldn’t even look at his face, he only saw his hands. Long fingers with knobby knuckles. Bitten nails. Over the next week, he looked in pieces at the boy who sat next to him. Beat up sneakers. A hoodie with a hole in it covering a thin chest. Long nose. Long, blond hair. And finally the eyes, and the smile. Like a grand finale. His teeth were straightening under braces. Donald allowed himself, just once, to think about what those braces might feel like brushing up against his mouth. His eyes were brown and hooded under thick, black eyebrows. His face was dusted with red spots. Donald was in love.

He wanted to take pictures of him and put them everywhere. He let himself do it once. A picture of his hands. Donald kept it in his messenger bag and never showed it to anyone. He never found out his name. In feverish dreams he gave him different names. Chris, Nick, Peter. He would never ask and he would never know.

That boy was who Jared thought of the first time he met Richard.


End file.
